ANTH 2 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Vestigiality, Adaptive Radiation, Uniformitarianism
6 Aug 2020
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Lord buffon- 1700s: mutability of species- he suggested that life on earth was changeable, which was pretty heretical. Georges cuvier (1769-1832): he believed in immutablity (nothing changed ever and it was created recently by god). However, people were finding dinosaur bones and stuff so he created another theory to account for this called catastrophism. The animals that survived are here today and those that didn"t all went extinct. James hutton- he believed in uniformitarianism, which is the idea that the processes that we see in the earth today (earthquakes, volcanoes) have been operating throughout history. This theory is about rock, not life, but contributed to the idea that if the earth itself is constantly being remade, then maybe life is too. Thomas malthus (1766-1834)- struggle for existence, he thought that there were too many people on the earth and that there would be what is called a struggle for existence .
